Gordon Ramsay's Secret For Steak Is Chicken-Flavored

The popular chef whose colorful language is as entertaining as his cooking also has a hack for cooking some problematic foods. Filet mignon is one such food. Filets are cut from the beef tenderloin, an extra-lean piece of meat that is easy to overcook into a beef-flavored hockey puck. Ramsay's secret weapon for cooking a perfect filet is chicken stock, along with some garlic and herbs, a hot skillet, and a room-temperature piece of meat.

Ramsay adds chicken stock for a few reasons. Cooking the filet in stock adds much-needed moisture to the meat, making it tender. The stock also cooks into the pan drippings from searing the steak to become a flavorful sauce. In a Facebook video called "Cooking Basics with Gordon Ramsay," he called chicken stock "the vital ingredient to good cooking." Chicken broth can also be used instead of stock if you want to cut caloric intake while still enhancing the flavor of the sauce. 

The celebrity chef and restauranteur adds the chicken stock to his pan about mid-way through the cooking process. Ramsay begins by letting the meat rest before cooking it until the filet is at room temperature. Then, he heats a pan until it's hot, adds oil, and then the rested steak. He adds aromatics like thyme, rosemary, bay leaf, and garlic while searing the steak on both sides. During the last part of that process, Ramsay adds the chicken stock and lets the steak cook in it for a few minutes. He then removes the steak to rest and continues cooking down the chicken stock, deglazing the pan as he goes along. 

This chicken-flavored steak cooking method has a few benefits. First, it works on any lean cut of meat, including sirloin and round steaks. These cuts are known to be "tough" when overcooked and are easily dried out without proper preparation. Ramsay uses these cuts in his steak sandwich recipes. If you're cooking a lean cut like filet mignon, using chicken stock or broth is a way to enhance flavor and tenderness without raising the calorie count too high. Because chicken stock has twice the calories as chicken broth, you can always substitute broth for stock.